The Unseen is Seen

Wealthgiver, Chapter 2

This is the second chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.

MOOD MUSIC

In the southern mountains of what by now might be the Principality of Bulgaria, Andrei turned his eyes from the goat path and looked back, east, over the mountain he'd climbed.

The Rhodope Massif rolled out like the wheat fields his boots had ruined. Their western faces glowed gold with the light of the setting sun, but blue twilight had already drowned the slope. He could see his breath, the exact color of the clouds that obscured the valley floor.

Were there soldiers under that cloud? Agents of the Tsar, sent to hunt him down?

"Don't flatter yourself, Doctor," Andrei muttered to himself. "You are less than a germ on a mite on a louse's left forepaw." He turned away from the view. "If something kills you tonight, it will be the month of March."

Wet gravel crunched under Andrei's boots and walking stick. Sheep turds tumbled downhill. His pack weighed down his right shoulder, both too heavy and too light. No water in there, and very little food.

"Would have been better to not sell the horse," Andrei grumbled. "You could at least have eaten it." He pressed with his arms, pushed with his legs, and turned his face upward to the plume of smoke, glowing gray against the indigo sky.

The shepherd was smoking too, sitting on a stump downhill from his house, looking out over the blushing mountains. He saw Andrei and waved.

"Bessé, bass desést!"

Andrei didn't understand the words, or even recognize the language. He put his hand to his mouth and replied in Bulgarian. "Good evening! May I sleep here? I work, uh, gladly." Or at least his best attempt. Bulgarian was simple enough to speak as long as one stayed safely in the present tense.

"Íratsa Dúba tan vu désit!" The old man clamped his pipe between his teeth and pressed his walking stick into the ground. He grunted, attempting to lever himself off his stump. "Opa!" His leather-clad heels slipped in the mud.

Andrei rushed forward and caught the old man's elbow. The action was so habitual, Andrei found himself surprised when he looked down and did not see a soldier in his arms.

But no uniform. No blood or missing body parts. The old man was dressed well and warmly, in baggy trousers and a mantel of felted wool. His cap might even have been fine, once. It looked like real fox hide, and well-stitched.

"Steady now, grandfather." He realized he'd spoken Russian, and switched to Bulgarian to ask if the shepherd was all right.

Eyes like horse chestnuts stared up from the shadow Andrei cast onto the old man's face. His pipe fell from the shepherd's gaping mouth, and his eyelids fluttered like shutters banging in the wind. "Knéssam Bu," he said. "Da déla mi, vas knéssam tsi éna Iú!"

Dementia. The diagnosis came with the ease of a card flipped from a deck. He babbles, as you say. Better to overdo than underdo. Free up his cot for the next body.

Pain shot through Andrei's legs as they tensed to run again.

Doctor, would you drop a patient?

Andrei clutched the old man tighter, hands shaking, and the old man clutched back. "Ítim Bu! Stopané mi, íma ítim." He wept as if with relief. "It mi vu Ádass."

"It's all right," Andrei said in Russian. "It's all right. You just lean against me, yes." He swallowed. "Rest, grandfather, while I find out," he looked up the hill to the house, "who's taking care of you."

Like most of the houses Andrei had passed on his climb, this one had been partially dug into the flank of the mountain. Walls of mortared stones extended from the earth, supporting wood and plaster. Its enormous, square roof slates gave the house a scaly appearance, as if a dragon coiled in its burrow, smoking sleepily from its chimney nostrils.

The old woman inside was as tiny and bent as her husband. Firelight outlined her rounded shoulders as she opened the door. "Come on!" she said. "Welcome," paddling with her hand to urge him inside. Andrei hoisted the burden over the threshold.

The thick, felted carpet might be the source of that sheepish smell, or it might be the animals penned in the stone-walled lower story of this building. Sleepy chickens clucked down there, and the cauldron over the fire bubbled.

Firelight played over the gravestone-shaped clay icon leaning up against the wall next to the hearth. The robed figures of a man and a woman had been molded into it, perhaps saints Constantine and Elena. The man was bearded and grim, haloed in black. The woman was young and smiling, and her halo was red. Little clay figures had been placed in front of the icon and narcissus flowers in a pot.

"Come on," repeated the old woman. "Come. Sit down."

The old man in Andrei's arms looked up. "Iss igán, zoná," he babbled. "Tabrát ak a tsin támsse usámin, na mía mi vu iss Ádass!"

"Quiet!" cawed his wife. She was dressed the same as other peasant women here, in wide-skirted homespun dress. A headscarf of some finer cloth covered her hair, and a bracelet of twisted white and dark wool circled her right wrist. Her eyes darted to Andrei and she smiled, showing bad teeth. "My husband. Radoslav. His mind is not good."

"Radoslav. Ralstén," said Radoslav, possibly in agreement. He pushed himself off Andrei and hobbled toward his wife. "Ádass kápa ni vu it," he said. "Kápa ni írmin ssi tar, tse dáma ta a idésma. Írmin kápa ta múa idésat."

The old woman's face cracked. It was as if a fist had closed behind it.

Diagnose that, Doctor? It's sorrow.

Andrei looked away.

"You be quiet!" the old woman ordered. "And you, deary, sit."

Andrei obeyed. The furnishings were distinctly oriental, with divans built into the wall, rather than chairs or stools. Shaggy woolen blankets had been rolled into tubes to form cushions. Andrei groaned as he settled onto one and the muscles down his back and legs finally unstrung.

"Isn't that better?" asked the old woman. "I'm Martha. What is your name, deary? What fate could have brought you here?"

He answered both questions as truthfully as he could. "I am Andrei and I am a deserter."

"Oh, a deserter." Martha half-turned, squinting at him. "Alone, are you, on the mountain? Take off your boots."

Andrei did so and his feet tingled with relief. "Alone," he said. "Or, I hope that that is so."

"Army searching for you?"

"I think no." Andrei reassured the both of them. "People desert Russian army every day."

Martha shook her head the way people did here when they wanted to indicate "yes." It was supposed to confuse the Turks, a local volunteer had once told Andrei.

"Russian," she said. "That explains the soft accent."

"Ádass ni kápa vu it," said the old man.

Andrei's toes twitched and he suddenly wished he had his boots back on. He wished he were back on the road, making tracks westward.

And leave the old man, Doctor? Abandon another patient?

Andrei shook his head. "Your husband," he said. "His illness has come suddenly?"

"Yes," Martha said. "It came on very suddenly. In the autumn, he was only a little confused. In the winter, I had hoped," Martha hesitated. "I hoped he would die before the equinox."

A year ago, Andrei would not have understood that hope. "It's a hardening of the arteries in the brain caused by advanced age," he said. "I'm afraid it's irreversible."

The old woman just watched him. Of course she wouldn't be able to understand Andrei's Russian medical jargon. "Although snowdrops might help."

"Pft." She flapped a hand, casting shadows like bats on the far wall. "Snowdrops."

"Or narcissus," said Andrei, remembering the altar.

A sharp indrawn breath. "Who are you to tell me about narcissus, as well as irreversible solidification of the arteries and all the rest of it? Are you a soldier or a doctor or, or what are you?"

"Ádass," said the old man. "Vas káma igán it."

Andrei flushed, but imagined how hard this last winter must have been. "I am a doctor, and as a doctor, I prescribe that you move your husband downhill." He tried to remember the name of the town where he'd sold his horse. "Peshterá?"

Calmer now, the old woman smoothed her skirts. "Péshtera," she corrected. "A peshterá is a hole in a mountain. A cave. No, we can't go to town. I can't take him downhill. Not in this state."

"Uphill!" said Radoslav in Bulgarian.

Martha glared at him. "You be quiet! Let me give him some soup. That will calm him down."

"Are there any people further up the mountain?" asked Andrei.

"Of course not." Martha turned her back on him and ladled soup from the cauldron. "Soup for you too, doctor?"

The old man stumbled around in the shadows by the altar. Metal chimed. "Dínin batsór an ésta?"

"Néi. Néi, Ralstené! Dínin ésta. Iá blássa."

"What is that language?" asked Andrei. "It isn't Bulgarian."

The old woman's shoulders tightened. "Oh, it's…" She tapped her cauldron with a ladle. "Have you visited Greek lands?"

"Well, I've met some people who speak Greek, but I don't recognize any of your husband's words."

"And you came here through Romania, I suppose." She smiled unconvincingly around at him. "My husband and I are Albanians, dear. Quite a few Albanians scattered around. The language we speak is quite old."

"Albanian," Andrei repeated. He tried to remember whether there had been any Albanians among his patients, and what their language had sounded like. He didn't know one way or the other, but he doubted it. Something about this woman told him she was lying.

Why would she do that, Doctor?

"Do you have any family?" he asked. "Children?"

"A son. We have a son," said the old man in Bulgarian.

"Yes, he lives," Martha coughed, as if buying time to lie with. "He lives far away. There." She turned from the fire. "Nettle and egg soup. It isn't much, but," Her hand brushed through the herbs hanging from the rafters. She selected one, wrapped in oiled cloth. "I'll add some dill for you, dear."

She held the bowl out to Andrei, who smiled and took it.

His smile vanished when the smell of the soup hit him. Heavy. Musty. Mousy. Like a cellar in spring. When the winter stores have begun to rot.

And yes, when he leaned back and looked inward, Andrei could feel his own nausea, like the onset of seasickness.

Hemlock. He had been poisoned from simply smelling it. And not by accident. The old woman was standing there by the fire, watching him. Shadows reached through her wrinkles, turning the lit side of her face into half of a broken bowl.

Andrei started back, sweat prickling his brow, gut slowly twisting. He could simply stand up and leave. His bootless feet throbbed. But where else could he sleep out there on the mountain at night? What the devil would he eat?

He could take food. Blankets. Money to buy more. Push these doddering old peasants aside and simply seize what he needed.

In that case, why not simply kill them?

The internal voice was sardonic, sharp and reassuring as a scalpel. And, as usual, right. If Andrei would steal a blanket, why not a whole house? Why not two lives? His teeth chattered.

It's not as if you haven't killed people before, and not merely by inaction. Why so suddenly squeamish, Doctor?

Because he was a doctor. He'd sworn an oath. By Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses. Andrei's fingers curled under the poisoned bowl. Fingernails scraped glazed clay. Better to run than murder a patient.

Andrei looked back down at the soup, and as if his eyes were his nose, he smelled it again. Dead mice. If he refused to eat, grandmother Martha would try to kill him in some other way.

The corners of Andrei's mouth tugged back.

How, exactly?

"What's the matter?" asked the old woman.

Andrei set his bowl on the bench next to him and leaned forward, elbows to knees. "Why," he asked, "are you trying to kill me?"

She closed her eyes. Her hands rose to clasp under her chin.

"Ái kness," whispered her husband. "Kness vu tamssáta. Ádass ni vu it."

"Go!" The old witch's voice was harsh as a raven's. "You must go. Leave this house. Leave this mountain. You must not be here."

Andrei stood, both in obedience and in threat. "Why should I not be here?"

"I can't tell you. You've heard too much already."

Andrei understood. "Secrets," he said.

"Yes. This is a mountain of secrets. Leave it. Go back to Peshtera."

"I can't go back to Peshtera. The Tsar's men will—"

A clink. Andrei looked down at the old man, the demented shepherd, crouching like an imp over his pack.

"What the devil are you doing?" Andrei demanded as the old woman cawed, "Tsi dássa?" Presumably, that was the same question.

"Zlat pe plasságat." Radoslav said. "Ssagáss, pagáss, praskágass. Ádass ni vu it."

"Food!" she snapped. "He is giving you supplies. Husband, put food in there. Bread!" She turned back to Andrei. "You can walk south, along the flank of the mountain."

"Where I'll freeze to death tonight."

Her mouth pursed. "Will you stay here instead, deary?"

Andrei looked away from her, and noticed that the little clay figures that had once stood in front of the icon were gone.

"Go south," Martha ordered again. "We've given you bread. You won't freeze. But you listen to me and don't shelter in any caves you might find. Nor sleep near a hot spring. Do you hear me?"

The hardest part of this whole process, for Andrei, was putting his boots back on. They squeezed mercilessly. "Thank you," he said, and with a guilty pang. "Go lie down, grandfather. Get some rest."

The old man tucked his chin down, as if bowing, and hobbled into the shadows in the corner of the house.

"If you meet anyone, say nothing," ordered Grandmother Martha.

"I won't tell them about you, grandmother." Andrei hoisted his pack. It was much heavier.

The old woman jerked her chin. "Do not speak. Just go."

Andrei bowed with ironic formality. "Very well, madam. I will go." And in none of the directions you gave me. He turned and set his face up the slope.

Next: Chapter 3: Earth, Protect Me (10/24/24)

More about Wealthgiver